Pivotal Year for Washington’s Sagelands
From Audubon Washington
Summary:
Audubon’s research and clean energy advocacy continues to protect Washington’s beautiful sagelands. We support clean energy infrastructure as a tool for fighting climate change – a major threat to birds – and strive to promote smart siting practices that protect bird and wildlife habitat. As clean energy infrastructure surged across the state this year, we worked with local chapters and partners to offer science-based comments for proposed projects. We developed a Clean Energy Screening Tool to identify potential conflicts with birds along with identifying shrub-steppe habitat, landscape connectivity, and prime agricultural areas. We also joined the Least-Conflict Solar Siting Project for the Columbia Plateau, advocating for the inclusion of our sagebrush songbird science and other key datasets to help identify best areas for utility-scale solar development. After 6 years, 285 volunteers, 14,000 volunteer hours, and 987 individual surveys, Audubon Washington released the final Sagebrush Songbird Survey report findings, helping to build new species distribution models for songbirds that rely on sagebrush habitat, and informing landscape-level conservation.
Read the full article here: How we protect sagelands for birds
Photo credit: Western Meadowlark by David Zieg/Audubon Photography Awards
